At the VII Congress on Literacy, Media, and Citizenship – Behaviors, Narratives, and Human Rights, which concluded today in Coimbra, Telmo Gonçalves emphasized that cooperation is “central to the success of any strategy to combat disinformation,” stating that ERC collaborates with various national authorities for this purpose.
“I’m referring to the cooperation between ERC and ANACOM [National Communications Authority], CNE [National Election Commission] during electoral periods, the National Cybersecurity Center, the Judicial Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and intelligence services,” he stated.
“There is an informal network established for us to communicate and identify potentially critical disinformation situations that could jeopardize any process, such as those that may occur during elections. This cooperation network is in place,” Telmo Gonçalves highlighted.
In a plenary session on “Media Narratives or (Dis)informed Discourses,” where disinformation and the erosion of public trust in the media were key topics, the ERC board member stated that the entity’s strategy to combat disinformation not only involves cooperation but also the axes of prevention and monitoring.
Telmo Gonçalves incorporated media literacy into the prevention axis, considering it a “priority, especially in very specific situations, such as during election periods, to promote educational content.”
“In media literacy, disinformation is a fundamental topic,” he noted, adding that prevention is essentially the “creation of long-term resilience to protect citizens against disinformation campaigns.”
ERC “does not have a specific mandate to combat disinformation,” as this is not defined in the legal framework, nor has it been assigned to any entity or even defined what constitutes disinformation. The media regulatory body “has always understood that preserving the integrity of information is a central issue of its activities because we have the responsibility to defend citizens’ right to information,” Telmo Gonçalves asserted.
Thus, “in general terms, anything related to citizen information and press freedom that is connected to disinformation actions, we consider [ourselves] competent to act,” he declared.
In the monitoring axis, ERC has been focused on collaboration with academic observatories, starting with the European elections, continuing with the legislative elections, and currently ongoing for two months during the presidential elections, in partnership with LabCom at the University of Beira Interior (UBI).
The project, he added, monitors the disinformation phenomenon based on political party communications.
In the last legislative elections, 16 situations were identified, resulting in nine cases opened by ERC related to disinformation.
